Detention

How to spell detention

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce detention

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does detention mean?

1. nounA punishment in which a pupil is kept at school after normal hours.
2. nounThe act of officially holding or confining a person, especially in custody.

Detention in a sentence

• The teacher gave him a detention for arriving late again.

• The suspect was held in detention pending the bail hearing.

• Three missed homework assignments earn an after-school detention.

• The migrants were moved to a detention centre near the border.

Where does detention come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Detention comes from the Latin detentio, a noun built on detinere, meaning 'to hold back' or 'to keep away', which combined the prefix de- ('down' or 'away') with tenere, the verb 'to hold'. The same tenere root quietly powers a whole family of English words about holding, including retain, contain, tenant and tenacious, so the buried 'ten' in the middle is really the holding part of the meaning. English took detention through Old French in the fifteenth century, at first for the general act of keeping something or someone back. Its now familiar uses, the legal holding of a person and the school punishment of being kept in after hours, both grew naturally from that original idea of being held against your will. For spelling, it helps to hear the word as de + tent + ion, since the trap is the unstressed middle syllable and the -tion ending that sounds like 'shun'.

How the word is built

• de- (down, away)
• tent (from Latin tenere: to hold)
• -ion (noun of action)